Ben Gordesky a Renewable Energy Manger with DC Energy Innovations poses for a photo on top of Draker Laboratories on North Street in Burlington. / IAN THOMAS JANSEN-LONNQUIST, for the Free Press

Written by

Ben Gordesky

The recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and growing awareness of global warming has underscored for many people that we need to move to energy sources other than oil and natural gas. Unfortunately, some people, including our president, see nuclear power as a way to reduce our carbon footprint and to end reliance on energy sources that can have big environmental impacts.

I believe we need to move away from fossil fuels as an energy source as quickly as possible. I think, though, we should do it right the first time. When it comes to electricity generation, there are many renewable-energy choices. Efficiency, solar, wind, hydroelectric and others have a virtually zero carbon footprint as they operate over their lifetime. A nuclear power plant relies on uranium and other fuel sources that need to be mined and transported to the plant. They also produce radioactive waste, which eventually needs to be transported to a waste-disposal site. Because of this, nuclear power does not have a zero carbon footprint as the plant operates. It has a carbon footprint about 25 percent that of a fossil-fuel-based plant.

In addition, nuclear power has many associated dangers. Plants constructed like Vermont Yankee regularly disperse low levels of radioactivity from the cooling towers. This is how the plant is designed; it is not a malfunction.

Other types of plants, such as the decommissioned Yankee Rowe plant in Massachusetts, were designed to emit low levels of radioactivity in their wastewater stream, mostly in the form of tritium. The Massachusetts Department of Health performed an eight-year study in the areas surrounding Yankee Rowe. They discovered increased cases of children born with Down Syndrome and increased incidence of breast cancer and heart disease.

Also, there is still no solution to the problems of where to put the radioactive byproducts of nuclear-energy production.

Some claim that nuclear power, despite its inherent risks, is still too cheap to pass up compared with safer zero-carbon energy sources. This is actually untrue. As the inherent risks of nuclear energy get worse as Vermont Yankee ages, wind farms are producing power at about the same cost as nuclear power. Utility-scale hydro plants produce power less expensively. Even solar electric production, the most costly of the renewable-energy sources, is predicted to compete favorably with nuclear and fossil fuels in the next several years.

When it comes to building new nuclear plants from scratch, nuclear fares even worse. One new 1,000 megawatt nuclear plant currently under construction in Finland is slated to cost $10 billion to complete. Not a cheap price. And this cost does not include costs of decommissioning or the running costs of the plant, such as fuel mining and delivery and waste disposal. The cost of decommissioning VY (a 640 megawatt plant) is estimated at about $1 billion.

I also want to clarify some confusion about the cost of solar electricity and the Vermont feed-in tariff. The Vermont feed-in tariff, begun last year, offered a price of 30 cents per kwh for solar electricity for a limited total capacity of new solar plants.

This price was such a bonus above the cost of producing solar power that the Public Service Board needed to award this special offer using a lottery. More than 180 projects applied within eight hours. Only 18 could be accepted. So, the 30-cent figure is not an accurate measure of the cost of solar electricity.

It is true that renewable energy sources recently have benefited from federal and some state tax credits. However, it was not that many years ago that incentives for renewable energy were virtually nonexistent while the tax breaks and insurance guarantees for fossil fuels and nuclear were quite abundant. Most of these incentives for fossil fuels and nuclear power are still in place. For example, nuclear power has benefited for years from the Price-Anderson Act, which limits the liability of nuclear plant owners in case of an accident. Essentially, our federal tax dollars pick up after the plant’s liability is used up. Without this law, no insurance company would insure a nuclear power plant, and nuclear power plants never would have been built.

The latest news concerning energy incentives is the Kerry-Lieberman bill now in Congress. This bill would subsidize nuclear further with $9 billion in loan guarantees. The bill would give solar energy about $1 billion. Even so, despite the extra subsidies for nuclear in the United States, the big push in the U.S. and, far more in the rest of the world, is for renewable energy. The world is steering away from nuclear and fossil fuels and toward wind, solar, hydro and efficiency.

So, I believe America should follow the lead of the rest of the world and do it right the first time. Vermont should lead, as we have on many important issues, and, we hope, the rest of the country will follow.

Ben Gordesky is the renewable energy manager at DC Energy Innovations in Burlington and North Hero and lives in Burlington with his wife, Bonnie, and two young children. He has been interested and involved in promoting clean energy choices for most of his life. Contact Ben Gordesky at bgordesky@dceivt.com.